Less Pilots = More Flight Delays

According to the American airplane manufacturing giant Boeing, the airline industry will need nearly 30,000 new airline pilots every year to join their fleets for the next twenty years, if the industry hopes to keep in line with the growth of airline travel in the coming decades. And the company also warned that if the industry is unable to keep up with this demand, then the specter of flight cancellations and delays will inevitably rise and increase.

Some of the greatest shortage of airline pilots is currently seen in developing countries, like China and India as more and more people take to the skies in those countries. However, in Europe airlines will be forced to train new pilots as well as ever increasing pilot shortages occur.

Forty percent of new pilots will be needed by China in the coming decades and European will need one-hundred thousand new pilots.

The demand for pilots is so acute in China, that the countries airlines have taken to offering huge sums in order to entice foreign pilots to move and fly airplanes in that country.

Some carriers are advertising salaries of more than $300,000 a year — and they say they’ll cover the tax bill, too.

“There’s not enough pilots in the world to fill the demand,” said Dave Ross, the CEO of Wasinc International, a firm that finds pilots for Chinese airlines. “This is why the pay keeps going higher.”

China will need between 4,000 and 5,000 new airline pilots every year for the next two decades, analysts estimate. Chinese airlines are among the fastest growing on the planet — at home and abroad — and they’re the biggest buyers of jetliners from Airbus and Boeing.